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pages 53 and
54), together with the daily registers
(examples: pages 66 and
84) and the original card files made at
Drancy as prisoners arrived (examples of cards from the files: pages
11 and 1305). In addition, it received the card files of the two
Loiret camps (Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers) and the Paris Police
Prefecture's card file of arrested Jewish families and individuals. The
Ministry's collection of deportation lists includes those for 43 of the 52
deportation convoys dispatched before the arrival of Aloïs Brunner as
commander of Drancy in June 1943. The exceptions are the very first list (for a
combined convoy from Drancy and Compiègne) and the lists for the eight
convoys dispatched from the Loiret camps. The Ministry used the Drancy card
file to reconstruct some of its missing lists. (The Ministry also has a list of
last-minute deportees whose names are not on the lists held by the CDJC.) The
CDJC's collection of lists is of poorer quality, but more complete-it lacks
only the lists for the first convoy and the two last large ones (convoys
76 and 77) from Drancy.
Comparisons between the lists from
the Veterans Ministry and the CDJC, as well as other sources, were used to fill
in gaps and to try to resolve discrepancies. This was especially the case with
some lists made before July 1943, where deportees' names were struck out and
replaced with other "last-minute" deportees or persons on "complementary
lists." Files at the YIVO Institute in New York, the International Tracing
Service of the Red Cross in Arolsen, Germany, and the Belgian Ministry of
Public Health and Family in Brussels were particularly important to these
efforts.
Three factors contributed to some errors and omissions in the
1978 Mémorial. First, some of the information recorded at the
time of deportation was undoubtedly incorrect. Perhaps the clearest example is
that of the lists of the Pithiviers camp, from which over 6,000 Jews were
deported to Auschwitz. There, French gendarmes, not Jewish internees, took down
the information given by the deportees, many of whom were foreigners who had
difficulties with pronunciation and spelling. Thus, inconsistencies and errors
in names and birthplaces were recorded at the very beginning. Second, our
reconstruction of the convoy lists used the actual carbon copies of the lists
made at the time of deportation. We had only third, fourth, or fifth carbon
copies made on tissue paper. Poor legibility was a constant and was responsible
for some errors. And third, despite our best efforts, some errors crept in
during the transcription process.
Members of our organization, the Sons
and Daughters of Jews Deported from France (FFDJF), made a card for each entry
from the original lists and retranscribed the names to create our lists for
each convoy. Then a typist checked the accuracy of each list. (The process took
about 35 hours per convoy – 2,500 hours in total.) This work was done by
volunteers motivated by the best of intentions but not always familiar with the
complexities of Eastern European Jewish names, and when combined with final
transcription by a young French typist, errors were introduced.
This
children's memorial book benefits from our continuing research over the nearly
20 years since the publication of the first memorial. During this time, we have
been able to correct errors and to fill the gaps in the deportation lists. And,
perhaps most impor […antly]
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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